


Pyramus & Thisbe

by EllieCarina



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Pyramus and Thisbe, Retelling, fairy-tale-style, myth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:10:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8082571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieCarina/pseuds/EllieCarina
Summary: The myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, retold in a Reylo AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my fic for the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology.
> 
> The wonderful illustration was made by angel.

In a galaxy far, far away, there was a planet, the greenest place in the universe. And on that planet was one city sitting on a big rock, floating high above the ground. But even though the rock was big, it wasn’t big enough for all the people who lived in the city and so eventually, they started building upwards, raising the city to the sky, higher and higher until it was as tall as the rock was long and there was no more space to grow. Any higher, just one single plank or tile more, and the city would crumble, sending the rock crashing back into the ground. It would end all there ever was.

 

That’s why, at a turn of one bright year--coincidentally when a baby boy was born to Leia Organa and Han Solo--the wise leaders of the city, the council, decreed that there were to be no more than three new marriages a year and only as many births as there were deaths in the year before. From then on, the streets and alleys of the city were quieter, with all the children left growing up fast. It took almost ten years until there was a new baby born on Ben Solo’s street. 

 

It was a joyful day. The neighbours came from everywhere with gifts and good wishes to look upon the rare sight of a small new living thing. Her parents and her grandfather, wise old Ben Kenobi, were proud of their new family member and showed her around with great enthusiasm. “This is Rey, our little ray of sunshine,” they said. “The council named her Thisbe for it means _ love _ and that is what she is.”

 

In the city above the clouds, everyone was given a name by the council which was then recorded. Your parents gave you a name of their choosing, but for any official business, you were to use the name provided by the authorities. There were worse names than  _ Love _ , young Ben Solo thought, thinking Thisbe sounded nice and funny, not unpronounceable and clumsy in his mouth as his own did. Pyramus. It meant  _ fire _ . Ben liked that. Fire was also easier to say. On the day Rey was born, he went over to his godfather Ben Kenobi’s house and held the little baby; she fit on one of his arms. She was the littlest, most precious thing he ever held and he vowed then and there to always protect her.

 

She grew up under the neighbourhood’s watchful eyes from vivacious little girl into a lovely, if headstrong, young woman. Ben only heard of her, and saw her every other weekend when he was allowed home, away from the Academy. One time during his visits, when she was sixteen, and a dark cloud hung over his head that made him irritable and uneasy, she broke through with her light--for just a second--just so long as he saw her and she grinned a friendly hello. They didn’t speak more than this and it was years before he seaw her again. He hardly noticed. He had other things on his mind. 

 

Something had been bothering him for as long as he could remember and life at the Academy, training to be a Jedi, only intensified his discontent. His life was terribly regulated; just like everything in their cloud city. The Jedi Order burdened him with rules and shackled him with principles. He was not allowed a wife, and by then, at twenty-eight, the loneliness of this one rule began to eat away at him. But not only that; he was the son of a large, important family yet, he was supposed to keep his head down, not strive for greatness but stay in the mold and the grasp of the Jedi. To keep out of trouble until some crusty old hag deemed him ready to fight. It angered him. He wasn’t proud of it, but he was prone to fits; his father would call them tantrums--Han Solo had little love for Ben and his feelings. 

 

Thus, it was all too easy to prey on the Solo legacy child. He was a grown man when he joined the First Order and burned his Jedi robe. He was an outlaw now, and his family shunned him from their home, telling him to not come back until he was ready to be done with “that First Order business”.

 

Alas, he wouldn’t be. The First Order might have had questionable methods, but they fought for a common goal, something for Ben to believe in. They wanted to change the city in the sky; make it freer, put new people on the council seat by any means necessary, people that would rule with more foresight, grant more freedoms, find a better way. People like Ben, or so he believed. He had been a part of about five strikes--lesser people would call them attacks--by the time Rey moved into a small room above him. 

 

She needed to be closer to the Academy, having gotten in by extraordinary talent, in spite of starting years later than normal. They had said she’d waited to be granted permission to marry and have children but was denied. Typical. He hadn’t spoken to her but felt the righteousness of his cause once again, because if someone as pure and wonderful as Rey wanted children, she should be allowed to have them.

 

The first time he noticed the slit in the floor, it was because Rey was singing and it was so loud, it sounded like she was standing right beside him. He called her name, hesitant at first because he was not sure that it could really be her--but then, he would never mistake her voice. She answered, eventually, not as surprised to find him under her floor as he would’ve imagined.

 

“I knew you lived around here somewhere,” she told him. “Plus, I could feel you in the Force.”

 

“You can?” he asked her and sifted through the energies he could always feel pulsing through the back of his mind and--oh, sure enough, there was a little ball of yellow light sparkling and reaching out to him. “It’s you,” he said and smiled because he’s known that light and sought it every now and again, just to warm up against it’s glow.

 

“I thought you knew,” Rey said and almost sounded a little sad.

 

“I’m sorry,” he said and he didn’t really know why.

 

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice sincere. He wished he could see her but all he could make out is her cheek and nose where she hovered over the small slit in the floor.

 

That night, they talked for hours and argued even longer about Ben’s choices, the Jedi order, morals, choices, freedom, and love. Rey was dutiful. She knew she was to forsake love and family, and she accepted this. She accepted this fervently for many nights to come and he never saw her, nothing more than small slivers of her face until one night, when he was fast asleep, right there on the floor with the opening into her room above him, her lying next to it, he dreamed of her. 

 

Only, it wasn’t a dream.

 

He knew it right away, although she was uncertain at first. They were in a meadow somewhere, in a forest, something they only know from a distance. Once she believed him, that they shared some sort of vision and it wasn’t just their separate imagination, she laughed and hit him playfully on his arm.

 

“You’re right, you have to be right,” she said, “I’d never have imagined you in so much black. You look positively glum.”

 

“It’s the way of the First Order,” he told her, firm but not unkind.

 

“It makes you look pale as a sheet,” she retorted but she was smiling as well.

 

“You’re even more beautiful than the last time I saw you,” he said a little awkwardly but discovers that she blushes even in this dreamlike vision.

 

“You’re not supposed to say that to me,” she said, looking away from him. 

 

She was right. They were forbidden from anything even bordering on romance, for it has no future. But in truth, Ben had been longing and hungering for Rey for weeks upon weeks. Even before he’d laid eyes on her again, in the darkest hours of his nights, he had wished her close. He had taken his shame into his own hands. Surrendering himself to the memory of her voice whilst he spent himself over his stomach. He was embarrassed to remember it, because he knew somehow that Rey could sense all of it. But her light never dimmed when he thought of her like that. If anything, it only glowed brighter.

 

“Ben, we can’t,” she told him then, as if she’d heard him.

 

“Do you not love me?” he asked her then, emboldened by the steps she was taking towards him, as if she was unconsciously drawn to him.

 

“I cannot love you,” she said, “I am not allowed to. And you cannot love me.”

 

“And yet I do,” he insisted and took her face into his open palm, “and yet you do as well.”

 

She said his name like she wanted to stop him but at the same time, her small hands dug into the thick fabric of his robes and pulled him closer. When she crashed her lips against his, Ben woke up on his floor.He was on his feet in a flash. It took almost half an hour to run up to her level and when he arrived, he found the door ajar and Rey laying in her bed. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes downcast.

 

“No one can know,” she told him when he lowered himself down onto her. 

 

“This can’t happen again,” she said when he gently took off her nightgown. 

 

“I love you,” she said when he was buried inside her, feeling a bliss that is more divine than human. She came apart under him and he forgot what it was like to hate things. She said this would never happen again, but it did. 

 

It happened so often that one day, Rey realised she had missed her moon cycle--that there is life growing inside her, a life that is half hers and half Ben’s making, that they were about to be parents to a babe that should not exist. It was at once the worst and the most wonderful thing that could have happened to them. 

 

No one could know about this child. If anyone found out, Ben and Rey would both be cast out and punished. Their innocent baby would be thrown into the void past the ports of the city or given up to some sky captain docking at the harbour. Rey would not let that happen.

 

Below, at the ground of the floating rock stood a tree, the most well-known on the rock. It was the oldest that has ever grown on the rock; the first and wisest of its kind. Expectant mothers brought their good hopes and a token of love to hang on one of the branches and wish for a peaceful delivery and a healthy child. Rey stole away from the academy, her belly swollen almost past the point of hiding. She waited for Ben to come so they can speak to the tree. It was better luck to have both the father and the mother there. But he did not come. He did not come for a long time.

 

By the time Rey started to worry, there was a rustling in the tree that was not from the wind. That much she can tell. She peeked around the branches to make out the source of the noise and almost shrieked, jumping back in terror. Snoke, the giant snake of whispers, emerged from the leaves, sliding around the tree, down to be level with her. Snoke was an evil thing, as old as the City in the Clouds itself. He slithered about the streets at night and whispered dark things through the cracks within the city. Many slept with cloth crumpled into their ears in fear of the ghastly manipulations the snake would whisper into their sleep. All attempts to extinguish him before had failed dramatically. They said it was because he could foretell the future and thus, knew of any attempt on his life long before they were even conceived. Snoke was too fast, too slick, too ominous to catch and now he was face to face with Rey, who clutched her belly on instinct.

 

“You wait for the boy, he will not come,” Snoke hissed eventually. “He is a boy no more, but a man, and my creature.” Rey reeled back in dismay, Snoke’s poisoned whispers permeating her flesh. “A creature of darkness. The council will learn of your child with him and cast you out. They will confine you to the temple and throw your child off the rock. Ben Solo will die and Kylo Ren will rise in his place and overthrow the council. He will rule and I will whisper and finally, finally, this wretched place will be mine in earnest.”

 

“You’re lying,” she argued, irritated and afraid. Surely what he says is no more than wild speculation.

 

“Silly girl, you know it’s true,” the snake said darkly. “This child under your heart should never be and yet here you are. The beginning of the end. His heart will break when he hears of the loss of his child, and he will follow me fully down the path of darkness. After that, the world will burn, the child and you along with it.”

 

“No, stop,” Rey begged, stumbling a few paces backwards. It couldn’t be right, it couldn’t be true.

 

“You know it, you feel it,” the snake kept hissing. “You are doomed child, lost without hope, and Kylo Ren has no love for you. He can not love a living thing. This is the future I see. Spare yourself the pain, end it here, today. Walk off the rock. Don’t make your child brave the fall alone.”

 

Rey shook her head fervently, but stumbled backward. The snake keep hissing, louder and louder, in her head. He told her she’s been mistaken, unloved, that she had no future, that she was sick and disturbed for breaking the rules of the city and that she would suffer. She screamed until she could not stand it anymore, ripping apart the scarf she wore in her terror and leaving it behind when she ran. Down and away, away from the tree, away from the evil snake who didn’t follow. He had done his part. 

 

Rey ran and ran, down the streets until she reached the low port. There was an old abandoned dock that opened into an abyss. The boundary of the City in the Clouds was here, just before Rey’s feet, and she cried in agony until the void called to her.

 

_ The snake knew the future, all hope is lost. Don’t make your child face the fall alone,  _ Rey thought as she took a step onto the wooden planks. She had taken two more steps when a pair of large hands closed around her shoulders. Ben held her tightly to his chest, panting heavily, and there was blood on the hands he had around her.

 

“What happened?” she asked him, all other thoughts cast out in his presence.

 

“I killed Snoke,” he said. “I was late, I am sorry. I couldn’t make it down fast enough, no doubt the work of the snake. He wanted me to be his creature but I could never be. I was always yours.” He breathed into her hair and Rey marveled at him for a moment, for he managed to do what no one else could so far. “His future must not come to pass.”

 

“But he was right, they will take the baby from us and lock me away. I was not supposed to love, I was not destined to be a mother. They’re going to arrest me and fling our baby off the edge of the cliff.”

 

“No, they won’t,” Ben said, steadfast and stubborn. “Because we won’t be here for it.”

 

“What?” 

 

“Around this corner, up ahead lays my father’s ship,” he told her. “He has not flown it since his smuggling days, he will hardly miss it. We are leaving on it, Rey. We will build our lives somewhere else, somewhere better.”

 

Rey turned around to him; that thought had never occurred to her--to leave the rock in the sky. It was the only home she had ever known, and she was training to be a Jedi. She already had a life. Still, if the snake had been right, this life would end as soon as the child under her heart was brought into the world and then there was really no choice to be made. So she turned around to face Ben and nodded her consent.

 

“Where will we go?” she asked him, her heart torn between hope and anxiety.

 

“Anywhere at all,” Ben said as he gently stroked her cheek with his black gloved hand. “So long as we go there together.”

  
The End


End file.
